Brentwood Academy is accused of allowing teenage boys to repeatedly sexually assault a 12-year-old boy, then downplaying the attacks and refusing to report them to authorities, according to a lawsuit seeking more than $30 million.
Ayrika Whitney/USA TODAY NETWORK - Tennessee

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Brentwood Academy Head Master Curt Masters talks to the media as James Blumstein, left, and Lee Barfield wait to answer questions after the supreme court decision was announced today. Photo taken Thursday, June 21, 2007 in Nashville, TN.(Photo: Larry McCormack, The Tennessean)Buy Photo

Nearly 50 years ago, his father was killed and possibly cannibalized while serving as a Christian missionary on a south Pacific island.

Later he met his wife while enrolled in an evangelical Christian school near Chicago. Eventually, his religious education career led him to Brentwood Academy, a prestigious Christian school in Williamson County where he has served as headmaster for 17 years.

Today, he is embroiled in a $30 million civil lawsuit filed earlier this month by a former student and his mother. The lawsuit accuses Masters of telling the 12-year-old boy, who was allegedly raped repeatedly in the 2014-15 school year by fellow students in a locker room, to "turn the other cheek" and that "everything in God’s Kingdom happens for a reason," common phrases in church culture.

Questions remain about what Masters knew in the weeks after the reported attacks. But the mother and son in the lawsuit argue the man leading the elite Christian school relied on religious rhetoric to downplay the rape of a child.

"I am a Christian and I strive to live my life, personally and professionally by Christian principles," Masters said in an emailed statement to The Tennessean.

Growing up in a mission field

Born in Alberta, Canada in 1956, Masters' childhood was far from typical.

The son of Christian missionaries, Masters detailed his upbringing and his father’s violent mission field death in an article he wrote that was posted on Brentwood Academy’s website.

His parents joined Regions Beyond Missionary Union. Phil and Phyliss Masters were stationed on a remote island in what is known today as West Paupa, a province of Indonesia north of Australia.

The Masters went to open a new mission station in the interior highlands of the island and build an airstrip.

"It was not until years later that we learned that the local leaders had planned to kill all of us when we got off the airplane. But when one of the chiefs saw my mother’s red dress, he took it as a sign of blood and a bad omen, so he and others stopped the plan to shoot all of us," Masters wrote.

Masters was in the seventh grade when his father set out with fellow missionary, Stan Dale, to find a spot to build another airstrip. His father, Dale and several native men were shot and killed on that trip in September 1968.

"Neither my father nor my mother chose this path. But what I learned from that experience is that while we rarely have a choice about how we die, we all have a choice in how we live our lives," Masters said in a statement to The Tennessean.

Joan Gregory remembers their deaths. She and her late husband, missionaries with The Evangelical Alliance Mission at the time, were stationed on the coast of the island while the Masters family was stationed in the highlands.

Gregory remembers hearing Phyliss Masters trying to reach her husband on the two-way radio and only receiving static in response. She attended the memorial service for the men.

"It was one of the most traumatic things for all of us,” said Gregory, who lives in South Carolina today. "We were in the south coast where cannibalism was a way of life … They didn’t do that in the interior. I don’t know if they ever actually said they cannibalized people in the mountains…Phil and Stan were in the mountains."

The Masters family thinks that fate befell their patriarch.

"One especially difficult thought was the idea that the people, who were cannibals, had eaten the bodies of the men they had killed. Early on we were told that they had been afraid to eat the bodies, and had been talked out of doing that, but later when the people were more comfortable sharing what had happened we found out that the men’s bodies had been eaten," Masters wrote.

Carl Hoffman, an American journalist and author of "Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller's Tragic Quest for Primitive Art," saw the waist-high, stone memorial marker for Phil Masters in the highlands while on assignment in the province in the 1990s.

Hoffman told USA TODAY NETWORK-Tennessee he did not know if cannibalism occurred in the highlands of the province, but was aware of it happening in the early 1960s on the southwest coast. Hoffman’s book lays out evidence that Rockefeller was killed and cannibalized.

The Masters family stayed on the island after Master’s father died. With the support of others, his mother could continue her work and pay for her children’s school tuition.

"Which is one reason why I have such an appreciation for the sacrifices that many supporters of our school make to allow Brentwood Academy to provide need-based financial aid," Masters wrote in the same article.

The headmaster’s education

Masters returned to the United States after graduating from high school. He met his wife Cindy while attending Wheaton College, a conservative Christian school in northern Illinois. In 1990 he graduated from the University of Puget Sound with a Master of Education, majoring in education administration. A spokeswoman for the school confirmed his degree.

Although Masters next attended the University of Miami, what he earned from the school is disputed.

Masters’ biography on the Brentwood Academy website says he earned a Ph.D. (ABD) in educational leadership from the school. A school spokeswoman told USA TODAY NETWORK-Tennessee that Masters attended from fall 1993 through spring 2001 but never graduated.

In this context, ABD means "all but dissertation." Without a dissertation, students can’t graduate or earn a Ph.D.

Masters acknowledged he’s not a doctor but did not believe the way his educational credentials are listed on the Brentwood Academy website is misleading.

"It’s a legitimate distinction. A PH.D. (ABD) is something you can claim," Masters recently told The Tennessean in a phone interview.

"I’m not going to change what it says on the website. It’s true."

He declined to say why he did not complete his dissertation.

‘A competitive compensation package’

Masters worked at private Christian academies in Washington, New York and Florida before becoming the headmaster of Brentwood Academy in 2000. He took over for Bill Brown, headmaster since the school’s founding in 1969.

"When Curt was selected for the job in 2000, it was important to the Board of Trustees that a competitive compensation package be provided to allow Curt and his family to live adjacent to campus," a school spokesman said in an emailed statement.

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FILE — New headmaster at Brentwood Academy, Curtis Masters stands on site of the new middle school building still under construction in 2000.(Photo: Michelle Lord, The Tennessean)

Masters earned between $309,000 and $347,000 annually in salary and other benefits between 2012 and 2014, according to the school’s public tax documents reviewed by USA TODAY NETWORK-Tennessee.

Additionally, the Masters received a $305,000 home loan and an $80,000 home equity loan from Brentwood Academy.

A review of the documents show the Masters’ average monthly payments on the home loan from 2012 to 2014 was between $680 and $711. The Masters paid a little more than $600 per month on average during the same period on the home equity loan, according to the documents.

The documents do not reference any interest rates. A school spokeswoman did not address specific questions about the loans.

Brentwood Academy pays for Cindy Masters to accompany Curt on trips, when approved by the board of trustees, and "membership fees associated with local service organizations" are also provided, according to the documents.

‘God is a master at turning defeat into victory’

Masters said his greatest joy is watching students flourish. He is known to give apples to teachers on National Teacher Appreciation Day. The academy website says Masters is known to say, “It's another GREAT day at BA!”

"Although we are first and foremost a school, our teachers have the privilege not only to nurture and challenge students academically, but also to encourage them to grow into individuals with strong values and leadership skills," Masters said.

"The biggest challenge is helping students see just how vast their potential is."

Masters and the school have not formally responded to the lawsuit. But it has the potential to change the future of Brentwood Academy and its headmaster.

The headmaster reflected on the future when writing about the death of his father. Out of his father’s death and the work of other missionaries, Masters learned about forgiveness and hope.

"We cannot always see the fruits of our efforts in the short term, and the measures of success that God uses are eternal, not temporal. One thing is certainly clear — God is a master at turning defeat into victory …" Masters wrote.

A glance at Brentwood Academy

Nearly 800 students pay $25,000 a year to attend the 6th- through 12th-grade college preparatory academy. The second headmaster in the school’s nearly 50-year history, Masters’ job is to oversee a school that seeks to complete the mission of “nurturing and challenging the whole person — body, mind, and spirit — to the glory of God,” according to the Brentwood Academy website.